


it's quiet uptown (i never liked the quiet)

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jewish Identity, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:12:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7194770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda grieves. But even when you don't have a family, you're never truly alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's quiet uptown (i never liked the quiet)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the lightning round at [tower party](http://towerparty.livejournal.com), for the prompt: _And here comes a killer whale, to sing me to sleep, thrashing the covers off, it has me by it's teeth — Florence + the Machine_
> 
> Title from Hamilton, sorry not sorry. Thanks to gecko for the quick read-thru and brainstorm.
> 
> __
> 
> _There are moments that the words don’t reach, there is a grace too powerful to name_
> 
> . 

There is no service when Pietro dies.

Captain America offers his condolences when they return to Stark Tower, his words full of formality and war speak and _I’m sorry for your loss. He was a good man, an even better teammate._ Thor looks sorrowful, Vision manages a manufactured apology, and Stark utters a curt “sorry” that makes Wanda wonder if he’s ever dealt with anything that comes close to losing the only person in your life who has ever unconditionally loved you. Natasha keeps to herself, but she looks at Wanda with eyes that say more than Wanda knows she’s capable of voicing at the moment --  _I’m sorry. I wish I could help, but I don’t know what to feel about anything right now_. She doesn’t say the words out loud, but her gait and expression suggest as much.

Barton, the archer, he doesn’t look at her at all, but instead disappears the moment they step off the helicarrier, slipping into the shadows. He’s gone the next day and no one will tell Wanda where he went, even if she asks.

Wanda grieves. She pretends that the comings and goings around the compound are like sitting Shiva, where people come to keep her company, sometimes sharing alcohol or food or books or memories. No one has any memories of Pietro though, because no one really had a chance to get to know Pietro -- not even the archer whose life he saved, who has mysteriously abandoned her.

And so Wanda grieves alone.

 

***

 

There is no Sokovia left, but that doesn’t matter, because Wanda knows the person she wants to see is not in Sokovia anymore. He’s here, for some reason that she can’t figure out, but maybe it’s because New York has always been the place you are supposed to end up if you have nowhere else to turn.

He has no family left, either.

She doesn’t expect it to be so easy -- to slip away, to find him -- but she does sneak away and she does find him, sitting on the steps of a Zen Center in Boerum Hill, near Flatbush Avenue. His coarse and wrinkled face is tilted towards the hot sun, and she doesn’t bother to announce herself before she sits down next to him.

“You should not be out here alone like this, Abraham. Your skin will get worse.”

“Then perhaps I will get a new face. And then I will be Abraham Siegler of New York, rather than Rabbi Abraham Siegler, leader of the largest synagogue in Sokovia.” He turns and smiles, the lines around his mouth widening into rivulets that seem to span a thousand years and then a thousand years more. “How did you know where to find me?”

“I didn’t,” Wanda admits. “It was a lucky guess. But then again, most rabbis do not retire to buddhist temples in Brooklyn.”

Abraham laughs quietly. “No, I suppose they don't. But when you have nowhere else to go and you have prayed for everything and everyone in the world, you find yourself wondering about how other religions live.”

Wanda nods, putting her chin in her hands, the collection of silver rings cold on her face. “How are you feeling?”

Abraham shrugs slowly. “Old. But, what can I do?” He pauses. “I do not read the Torah anymore. Or, for that matter, the fortunes of my favorite congregants.”

Wanda wants to laugh at the irony of his words. “It is okay,” she allows. “I do not know if my fortune is worth reading anymore, anyway.”

Abraham looks at her curiously. “Your brother.”

“Yes,” Wanda says, her words clipped. Abraham closes his eyes and hums for a long time under his breath.

“I’m sorry," he says finally. "We would have given him a service, in Sokovia.”

“I know you would have.” Wanda puts a hand on his arm. “But I did not come to ask you about that.”

“Then why did you come to me? Because you are thinking of running away?”

Wanda shakes her head. “I am going back,” she responds, though part of her wonders if she even should. “I need to go back. I have a responsibility to the people who have taken me in. They have forgiven me for my mistakes.”

“You have a responsibility to your faith, too,” Abraham reminds her gently. “Or is that what you wanted me to tell you?”

Wanda smiles thinly. “It would take me a lifetime to repent for all my sins,” she says, thinking of Sokovia and of Ultron. “To be honest, I am not sure if my faith deserves me right now.”

“Perhaps you think it does not,” Abraham advises. “But I can tell you that it deserves your brother.” He tilts his face to the sun again and takes a long breath.

_Y'hei sh'mei raba m'varach, l'alam ul'almei almaya._

Wanda tips her own head upwards, her smooth face a mirror of his wrinkled one, repeating the mourning prayer out loud.

 

***

 

Wanda Maximoff bought her first toy when she was five years old.

It was a small brown bird carved from heavy clay, smoothed over in a kiln, with red and grey wings and black markings on the underside of its beak. Wanda bought it with her own allowance money from an old lady in the market, while their mother was buying bread for dinner. She kept it on a shelf in her room, right above her bed, so that it was the first thing she saw when she got up in the morning. On good days, the bright Sokovian light would stream through the windows and cast shadows over the bird’s body, and while her mother welcomed the morning by singing soft songs in the kitchen, Wanda imagined the bird taking flight, soaring to the words of comfort and love.

After they’re captured in Berlin, after Steve and Barnes escape, after Rhodey falls from the sky and after she tries to tell herself that it wasn’t her fault, Wanda is shoved into a cargo hold with her teammates. She’s cuffed violently upon sitting down but she doesn’t protest and she doesn’t cry, even though she wants to.

“Tell me something that you remember from your childhood,” Clint says as the jet takes off. He keeps his eyes on her for the duration of the ride, and Wanda tells him about Sokovia, and about the clay bird.

“Why a bird?” Clint asks in a voice so soft Wanda almost doesn’t hear him as they sit in a containment unit some hours later, waiting to be let into their cells.

“It protected me,” she says just as quietly. Her fingers tingle with fear and emotion but the sparks burn her fingers because they have nowhere to go; she’s been in a straitjacket since they arrived, unable to move her arms and barely able to move her legs. “He was lost in the bombing. First the bird, and then my family, and then Pietro.” _And now my second family._ She doesn’t say the words out loud, because confirming it would hurt too much.

There’s a faint pressure against her leg and when Wanda looks up, she sees Clint shoving his knee gently against her thigh, his strong muscle pushing through the heaviness of her restraint. He’d take her hand if he could, she can read it in his eyes.

“I’ll protect you now.”

Wanda opens her mouth to say  _you are not a bird_ , before she realizes her words are a false statement.

She opens her mouth to say  _thank you_ , but finds she can’t talk at all, because a shock collar has been forcibly attached to her neck.

 

***

 

There is a girl that she goes to before her city falls, a fortune teller with eyes of glass blue. Her lips are painted teacup red. She holds out an age-stained hand when Wanda walks into the small shack at the edge of the city.

“I knew you would come.”

Wanda tries to smile. “My rabbi, he normally does not suggest something like this. But I am having nightmares, and he says it might help me if I settled my mind.”

“Would it help you to see the future?” the fortune teller asks calmly. “Or to become the future?”

Wanda stills with her hands by her side, realizing she doesn't quite understand the question. “I do not know. Is that what you can tell me?”

The fortune teller waves her hand, indicating a worn seat overlaid with beads that are woven together in a colorful tapestry. “I can tell you that you are destined to be remembered, Wanda. Is there something else that you would like to know?”

There is a man that she goes to after her city falls. He is not a fortune teller, but his eyes are glass blue and his lips are teacup red, blood spilling out of a cut that refuses to slow. He holds out a hand tinted in rainbow, a colorful collection of bruises and abrasions, and she lets him remove the shock collar from her neck.

“I knew you would come.”

Clint tries to smile, but Wanda can see that it hurts in more ways than one. “Cap wanted to find you himself. I told him I owed a debt.”

“Is this what you spend your life doing?” Wanda asks hoarsely, not moving from the floor. “Owing people debts?” The straitjacket is still tight around her body, a vice squeezing the life from her bones in the same way that her will to survive is ebbing.

“Depends on how important they are to me,” Clint says, bending down to pick her up. He carries her easily out of the cell, and when he finally removes the binds from her skin, she tries not to cry all over his thin prison uniform.

There is a girl that she goes to after her city falls. She is not a fortune teller either, but her eyes are glass blue and her lips are painted teacup red, a shiny and healthy gloss. She holds out a hand saturated with fingerpaint when Wanda walks into the farmhouse that is overflowing with love and laughter and belonging, years of comfort built into its creaking bones.

“I knew you would come.” Laura tries to smile, but Wanda can see that the emotion is rooted in sadness rather than contentment. “Clint wanted to bring you here after he came home from Sokovia.”

“It is not the way I would have wanted to meet you. Like this.” She avoids Laura’s eyes; there are still bruises on her neck from the shock collar, and her arms and legs still ache from confinement. She knows Laura, she has heard about Laura, she knows she will not be judged for how she looks or acts. But she is, by her own definition, a walking disaster of a person, a weapon beaten into submission, a fragile doll walking a tightrope between broken and alive.

“There is no perfect way to meet people,” says Laura. She reaches a hand forward, placing it on her shoulder. “Is there any chance that some tea might help you to feel better?”

 

***

 

At the farmhouse, Wanda eats and Wanda sleeps and Wanda helps cook breakfast. Wanda does not hold the baby named after her brother, at least, not until Lila crawls into her lap one night after watching a movie and settles against her stomach without question. Seven days after Clint has rescued her from the Raft, she politely excuses herself from the dinner table and gathers a few items from the storage cabinet in the hallway, climbing the stairs to the attic when the rest of the house has gone to bed. She lights one of the scented candles and sits in silence on the splintered wood, until Laura joins her some hours later, curious eyes asking silent questions.

“I should have done this a long time ago,” Wanda says slowly, and the iridescent glow casts a warm shadow over her face.

“Can I ask why you didn’t?”

Wanda looks embarrassed. “I do not know. It never felt like the right time. Or maybe I did not want to accept it. It still does not feel real. Even after all of this…” She swallows past a still-healing throat. “Sometimes, I think maybe it is all a dream, or a memory that I can erase. Sometimes, I think I will wake up, and this will all be over.”

Laura stays quiet for a long time, before indicating the candle in front of her. “Is that supposed to be for Yahrzeit?”

Wanda meets her eyes in surprise. “You know it?”

“Sort of. I had a college roommate who was Jewish,” Laura explains, moving closer to her. “And when you share one small dorm room with someone, you learn a lot about their traditions in a short amount of time. She lost her grandmother halfway through our freshman year, and I helped her grieve.”

Wanda looks down at the candle again and nods. “I did not mourn the way I should have, when my brother died. I thought I would have more time to process what his death meant to me. But then…” She moves her hand slowly, red sparks exploding against the darkness, and feels a pull in her chest. “But then it became hard.”

Laura trails her fingers down Wanda's dark hair. “I’m sorry they did this to you,” she says softly, and Wanda wants to ask what she’s apologizing for.

“It is not you that I need to ask forgiveness from,” she replies just as softly, and Laura’s breath hitches in her throat.

“Clint...he came home after Sokovia. He wasn’t there for you when you needed him, and he regrets that.”

The words are not a shock, nor are they an annoyance, because Wanda has known this from the moment she returned to her new home. “I know. Do you forgive him?”

Laura stares at the orange flame, hands stilling in Wanda's hair. “For what?”

“For me,” Wanda says simply. “For running out on your family, and for joining the fight.”

“Yes,” Laura whispers, dropping her hand so that she can put her arm around Wanda's shoulder instead. “Do you?”

“Yes,” Wanda repeats softly, staring at the fire that burns her face and her heart. “He came back for me. He is here now, and he protected me. And that is enough.”

 

***

 

There is no service after Pietro dies, but it is enough.

She sits with Lila and Cooper and tells stories about her own sibling, the one that used to make fun of her when she had a bad haircut or said a bad word. She listens while Lila and Cooper tell her stories of their father, tales of heroism and bravado wrapped up in wide-eyed storytelling from children who still believed in superheroes saving the world. Sometimes, Clint and Laura sit beside her in the dark, and they tell stories about their own childhoods while passing a bottle of honey bourbon back and forth, sticky liquid and hazy eyes giving way to laughter and connection across countries and lifespans.

There is no service when Pietro dies, and so Wanda creates one of her own. She lights a candle and sits in the barn, bathed in silence, remembering when no one else will; until outside light warms her back, until the sounds of children playing on the lawn become louder, until the echoes of Clint starting the tractor become more prominent, until she’s reminded of why she fights.

**Author's Note:**

> As much as I love the MCU, one of the things that has always bothered me is the erasure of Wanda's Jewish heritage since her introduction in AoU. So, I will try to reclaim that however and whenever I can.
> 
> For more fic and feelings, find me on [tumblr](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com).


End file.
